


silver and sugar crystal

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Cooking Shenanigans, Domestic Fluff, Family Bonding, Gen, Like Father like Daughter, Outo Country, in which one terrifying ninja becomes a terrifying (& supportive) dad in turns, newsflash: they're both giant dorks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: In retrospect, it shouldn't have been all that surprising to walk into a crime scene of forgotten chores and shattered flour jars.“—and everythingfell, and I just—oh, it’s such amess, I—”The glare Kurogane tosses upon the ceiling all but burns a hole through the drywall. “Alright,” he huffs, “it’s fine,” and turns to inspect the damage. “Haven’t sent us up in flamesyet.”
Relationships: Kurogane & Sakura | Tsubasa
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	silver and sugar crystal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [animangod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/animangod/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: "Family Bonding Time: Kurogane & Sakura Edition." In which Sakura is a helpless mess, Kurogane is clueless on how to Dad™, and the kitchen _still isn't clean_.

In the early morning, cherry blossoms sprinkled through the flyaways of his hair, Fai had set off for the clamor of Outo’s city center, one overzealous Mokona and Syaoran's groggy stumblings in tow ( _Can’t run out of coffee now, can we?_ he had mused, halfway out the door, _and, of course, we’ll need more flour, and eggs, and—oh! We should make sweet danish, and scones,_ and a great many other things before the wind had swept them away), and left to the helm of their new home had been the princess, bedraggled and doe-eyed in the aftermath, and one sourly chore-burdened ninja.

After some rounds of grumbling, they had delegated their tasks: split the house into clean halves to have tidied by noon, laundry gathered and floors swept and a whole host of other checkboxes left to be crossed off—and while Sakura had never thought herself a walking distraction, the kitchen proves a _frightful_ task (and the allure of new-learned skills an even more willful temptation: they _had_ been working on menu mock-ups, after all, and Fai-san wouldn’t be home for _hours_. The cleaning could always come later, surely). 

She decides on honey cake before she even has her apron tied proper; loses herself in the nests of their shelving to hunt out the giant tome of their recipe-book, a whisk procured for good measure—and by then, any sense of counter-cleaning and glass-polishing has fled her.

“First, we separate the eggs,” she says, determination mantled bright upon her shoulders. It’s quick to wither, a rapid succession: first in the stumbling of one spotted slipper on the stool she had dragged over to reach the higher cabinetry, its door all but ripped from its hinges where she scrambles, squeaks, three tins of spices overturned and the book uprooted, its binding a striking thunderclap upon the tile. “Or,” she whispers, pink to her ears, “maybe it was, um—sift the…the flour, first.”

Silence swallows the room in a cold tide. From afar comes the rumbled breath of a dragon, heavy footsteps slow-called to investigation, and Sakura balks; babbles, “I’m fine, it’s fine!” with hands fretting, cinnamon and sugar-cans rattling upon their shelves. Her elbow catches the edge of the flour jar, swept from its perch faster than her fingers can fumble. “It’s—” 

Glass shatters, a horrid _crash_. The debris plumes high enough to turn her white as a sheet.

“…fine,” finishes Sakura miserably. 

Through the fog, a dark hand reaches out; plucks the cookbook from the chaos, shakes it clean. “Leave you for five minutes,” Kurogane grumbles, and drops it flat to the counter, a dull thud. Sakura scrunches to a prune beneath the loom of his shoulders. “Ten, and you’d have this place burnt to the ground.”

She nearly sends the cookbook sailing a second time, quick as she leaps to explain; he claps his palm upon it, breath grizzling. “I just, I didn’t mean,” she blubbers, hands wrung to a tangle, “there was just—too many _things_ , and—”

“Alright—”

“—and everything _fell_ , and I just—oh, it’s such a _mess_ , I—”

The glare Kurogane tosses upon the ceiling all but burns a hole through the drywall. “ _Alright_ ,” he huffs again, “it’s fine,” and turns to inspect the damage; tacks on a dry mutter of, “Haven’t sent us up in flames _yet_ ,” with hand scratching at his nape. 

The emergency clean-up is finished easily enough, a cloth wet and wrung, flour cleared from clothes and skin and glass scooped into the rubbish, mumbled apologies a stream of static through it all. It is after the dust has settled that Kurogane glances between thin-slumped shoulders and the book left staunchly arm’s length away. “Something for that idiot, huh?” he mulls, one hand raised to leaf absent through its pages. 

“Well, I just—and then I—” She heaves out a great sigh, hands floundering; finishes, belatedly, with a grubble of, “Honey cakes,” shoulders plummeting further.

Kurogane pauses, eyes flitting back to flour-dusted fringe. He _hm’s_ , flips back a few pages; plants the list blatantly in front of frazzled eyes, words firm. “Try again.” 

Sakura gawks up at him as though he had thrown a bomb in her hands. “ _No_ ,” she wails, “I’ll just—mess it all up, again—”

“Put it that way, you will.” Kurogane scowls, furrows his brow. “No sense botherin’, if you’re gonna see it like that.”

She balks, blubbers; strings together consonants like mismatched beads, frantic excuses and denials, and through the storm that torrents, Kurogane _tche’s_ ; swipes up one dampened towel to _thwip_ sharp upon his shoulder, shoves up one sleeve and then the other. “First step?” he grouses, heavy hand bracing about the counter. Her downpour zaps into a startled peep.

“—and—oh.” Emerald eyes blink owlish at him. “Oh—it, um…” She gives the book an odd leer, as though waiting for it to spring alive and curse them both. “It says to…to sift the flour into a bowl,” she reads meekly, hands twisting, “with 250 grams of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon—”

“Alright. Second one?” 

“Ah—and then separate the egg whites, and mix in—”

“So: we need a bowl. And somethin’ to measure things out.” Kurogane arches one brow. “Think you can handle that?” 

Sakura blinks again, cheeks pink. Her eyes dart to her toes. “Well, yeah—”

“Let’s see it, then.” 

Had Fai been there (as he had countless times before, and countless times since: smile warm, and eyes patient; humming strange tunes with hands crafting instruments from every surface in sight, bright as a bird freed from its cage), they would had concocted wild stories of flour-tornadoes and enchanted books; laughed it all off and made the best of what was left, with no shyness in the face of first attempts. She knows she shouldn’t feel _differently_ , now—knows the discomfort in her chest comes, rightfully, from a place of respect—still, it’s not the _same_ (Fai, she didn’t have to impress).

She swallows, hands fidgeting, before puffing her cheeks, tall with resolve. “Well, I can—I can try.” 

So she does, if a touch awkwardly: teeters slow into the space carved for her, small though she stands, a songbird in the shadow of a mountain. Gradually, they trade off lines of directions; bend double to squint at fine print and quip dryly at what _folding eggs_ ought to mean; pass bowls and slatted spoons and bags and butter—and while there are no operatic complainings or twinkles of laughter or melancholic songs hummed through a smile, the light swallowed into dark hair and dark clothes instead of glowing off white collars, and the depth of that voice quiet and unnerving as the ocean’s dark instead of warm as the dawn, it’s not… _bad_. A little strange, perhaps, in its foreignness (it had been easy thing, for her and Fai to gravitate to each other, much the same as Syaoran had found more than one excuse to linger on night terraces after the air had grown cold—for neither of them had begun to crave the solitude that had so long been a comfort; had, instead, found warmth in the offering of something wholly new).

“What sweets do you like, Kurogane-san?” Sakura asks, through spooning gleaming dollops of honey into settling dough. The glower that settles upon those sharp features is a small enough familiarity, seen enough now to make a smile bloom wide at her cheeks, even if quick-hidden. 

“I _don’t_ ,” he grates, polishing cloth a firm squeak on the ridge of one water-glass. “If you two so much as _think_ of dragging me into trying all that crap—”

“ _I_ won’t, I promise,” Sakura blurts, grin bitten down. She forces on some semblance of passiveness, glancing up to see bloody eyes torn broodishly away, teeth bared with a low _Feh_. “There must be _something_ ,” she continues, and, quick to become faraway, looks down again; recalls what little she can of scattered memory, smile slipping. “I’ve always…well…I like honey, and coconut, and date pudding…but I’ve really started liking chocolate,” she adds, a sudden burst of brightness, “and raspberries are _amazing_ —and chocolate _with_ raspberries—and caramels, too—”

“Slow down, before you stir that to death,” Kurogane mutters, and Sakura yelps, spoon rooted in place.

“Right, right—”

The faintest twitch curls over his lip, there and gone almost quick enough for her to miss it. She stares for a good moment, wondering if she imagined it. “Matcha,” he says then, brow furrowing in thought; tacks down one gleaming glass to tip another into his palm, hands fluid in the routine. “And shouyu.” 

“Shouyu?” Sakura wrinkles her nose. “Isn’t that with the, um…that soy sauce, kind of—” His head tilts, a half-nod, and the crease at her nose scrunches all the further. “ _Ew_. I couldn’t—wouldn’t that be _salty_ —”

The raise of bloody eyes is sudden as a match struck. “There’s a broom with your name on it, kid, and I don’t see that oven on yet—”

“ _Right_ , right—”

That twitch curls again, further now, enough to carve a crease through dark skin. Sakura misses it fully, simmering with embarrassment; pours her attention instead into leveling four metal tins quick as she can, oven unceremoniously clacked on and whisk clittering within its bowl.

“Wasn’t that hard, was it?” Kurogane says, once polishing towel has been caught upon one shoulder again and a small timer _click-click-clicked_ to just short of fifty minutes, each tin finding a shared home upon two racks of brushed metal. 

Sakura scrubs her fringe from her brow; smiles small. “I, um—I guess not,” she murmurs, and Kurogane says nothing else of it. (A false sense of security, that; she would have assumed a growl of _Told you so_ at best, or a _Serves you right, brat_ at worst. The huff she is given is neither, heavy arms folded.)

“You gonna stand there and watch paint dry for the next hour, or you gonna do your part?” is what he gripes instead, blunt as an unsharpened blade, and before she can gather her footing from the rug torn out from under her, he’s pushed away from the counter to tread through the muck of their disorganized goods, one chair scraped into a dreadful rattle across the flooring to clear room for needed sweeping.

“I’m—I’ll help!” Sakura squawks, scrambling to find her footing; in a dizzied storm, she leaps to claim the broom and dustpan, flour-coated apron snared at her knees. “I’ll, ah—I’ll start here—”

“Half,” Kurogane corrects, another chair clattering across the floorboards. “Start on the windows, when you’re done.” 

“R-right!” 

And so they tackle their allocated duties, in some companionable silence (a snarl of _Idiot mage with his idiot crap_ diffused here and there, tangled within the web of must-laden linen shaken free and hung from the panes); arrange mismatched chairs and dusty rugs and scalloped plates; polish the lamps that flicker sunlight-gold above the bar counter, scrubbing the grit of disuse from the paneling. 

The timer’s chime is a violent thing, and the cakes stick to the tins—but the scent of honey fills the room the way only the first taste of home could. Huddled over the stovetop, they cut neat squares to sample with lemon sugar. It’s a half-success (too tart, for her; too sweet, for him), but fair enough, for a first attempt. 

“Might be better with tea,” Sakura wonders. Kurogane _Hn’s_. “Or better fed to the birds.”

She earns herself a loose rap of knuckles to her skull, for that. “That birdbrain will eat it.”

“ _Kurogane-san_ ,” she quietly scolds, mouth wrinkled up in her struggle to fight off laughter. She loses, eventually; dissolves snorting and flush-cheeked into new round of snickering, and, briefly, he joins her, smirk a slow thing to bloom. 

“You can try again, later,” he says, and clacks the oven off. (There is no implication that he will _help_ her; that any second- or third-rinsed practice will involve anything other than him glaring knives from the other side of the bar, one willowy mage dancing in theatrics between them. She turns the thought over, regardless; allows herself to sink into the warm strangeness of a comfort new-discovered.) “Got more important things to do,” Kurogane grumbles on, eyeing the sprawling disaster of utensils and batter-bowls between them like sinners awaiting execution, and quick as that leaves her reeling back into a terrified flounder. “You make a mess, you clean it.”

The largest of their hodgepodged mixing bowls almost makes a home for itself on the floor, frantic as she flings herself to action. He catches it, a hushing scrape; scoffs short through his teeth, making the decision to push everything some good paces from the counter's edge, and through the stream of the princess's babblings he growls gibberish beneath his breath, sets the sink's tap to a warm bath and begins the washing. (A living _tornado_ , this kid.) 

At some point, she had squeezed into the space beside him; had glanced skyward to his shoulder with wide-flitting eyes and fiddled awkwardly with a towel, similarly tossed over the slope of her own—and Kurogane doesn't even notice when he hands off one sudded bowl to the small hands laying it wait for it. He puzzles down to see her set quick to work, porcelain dried with ease, and finds himself lost, for a moment. (Maybe they _could_ get along.)

The edge of the bowl slips from her hands like ice, and she yelps; bends double to clap it to her chest, looking for all her worth like something petrified. A grin stretches nervously at her cheeks.

Kurogane raises one wet hand to knead firm at his temples.

( _Maybe_.)

**Author's Note:**

> If given the opportunity to gush over a family duo, I will irrevocably choose this one. They're such a mess, gods help them.


End file.
